Don't read if not watched, etc.
Basically everyone onboard the Valiant was outside of the great 're-set' and were unaffected by the memory loss. Everything up to the event of opening the portal however still took place. So Saxon/Master did make announcements about aliens and did kill the cabinet, but the US President was never killed on TV. All everybody knows was that Saxon was a nut that killed the cabinet and disappeared after making bizarre proclamations that never happened. Being party to that cabinet-killilng conspiracy I guess his wife would have a secret trial, with most of the prior events hushed up. The Master, ever one for 'I'll be back!' plans, left a cult behind to bring him back.
So that's cleared up. Now, what did I think of the episode?
Damn frustrating. The trouble with RTD is that he has these grand ideas that really do work, and then he bungles it all by throwing out first draft scripts and join the dots plotting. There were moments of excellence in the episode but they were undermined by the sloppy plotting that made the framework. The entire, "Hey, I'm a billionaire with a private army and a spacecraft and am building something mysterioso," was so unwieldy that I'm amazed that it ever got past first draft. Wouldn't it have been better for the aliens to have been working for him in exchange for him helping them fix their ship and getting them back home? It would have made the plotting a lot less, "Oh and by the way..." And why take the risk with Saxon/Master when the aliens would have eventually cracked it anyway?
Likewise with jumpy/lightning bolty Master. How exactly does that work? It's merely there for spectacle. I like the idea of him feeding on tramps and being brought low - that works, but again RTD tries to shoehorn it into an "AH HA! I HAS PLOTS ALL ALON!" notion that doesn't actually work. How did The Master know any of this was underway? It's an attempt once again to force an apocalyptic finale which hasn't had any groundwork laid for it. And no number of pompous Timelord utterances can mask it.
Were there good things in the episode? Yes. The finale with the 6 billion Masters was tops. The bits with Bernard Cribbins and the cafe talk was very good, and the Master sharing his insanity of the drumming with the Doctor was jolly neat too. John Simm was also super, and Cribbins great as usual. But beyond that it all felt thrown together.
It's infuriating because RTD is capable of aceness. Midnight, Rose, End of the World, Love & Monsters (yes, really), Parting of the Ways are all excellent episodes. But I think he's finally forgotten how to make good Who. His character has lost all the subtlety and mysteriousness of Ecclestone's series 1. There was a real distance to the character there that was quite affecting, but now that the Doctor wears his heart on his sleeve in every scene, and barks emotions and angst and joy, it makes for a one-note character. Damn shame.
Roll on the new guard. Thanks for bringing him back RTD, but we really need to carry on without you now.